I received my first shipment from The Book Depository in the UK yesterday. I have to say I am pleased. I am not sure how they can afford to offer free shipping to the US, but I am certainly not going to complain. I ordered three books and the first one, The Winter Rose by Jennifer Donnelly came yesterday. It was slightly discounted 5.98 (pounds)--the cover price is 6.99 (pounds), which comes to roughly $11.34, and there was no shipping charge or taxes added. That compares nicely to how much I would pay in a local bookstore (and this is a fairly hefty trade size book--well a bit larger than a mass market size and a bit smaller than our trade size). I would expect it to cost at least $13.00 here. Jennifer Donnelly is the author of both The Tea Rose (The Winter Rose is a sequel), and A Northern Light (I have read and enjoyed both). I didn't realize she wrote both books as A Northern Light is a YA book. She is also American, but it appears that The Winter Rose is only available in the UK at present. All three are historical fiction with a bit of romance thrown in. I had no idea she had written a sequel until I read it in a comment somewhere. This may have to be one of my winter vacation reads--I love epic sorts of stories! Anyway, they sent this in a mailer and I expect they had to fit the other two in a separate mailer, so they should be arriving soon (I hope). The bad thing is, that if they make it too easy and economical, I will end up buying more books from the UK (wait...did I say that was a bad thing? I suppose for my budget and already full bookshelves it is...). In any case, it is nice to have a reasonably inexpensive place to find British books that have not yet been published or are unavailable here in the US.
The Donnelly book is now waiting patiently for me next to my bed (the towering stack has been resorted and rethought, so it is a nice, tidy, small pile currently)--hopefully I can get to some of the books soon. I finished reading The Monsters by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening read. I won't quote anymore (I already returned it to the library), but there was plenty of interesting material there to share! I will add one little story--in the end, Clare Clairmont, Mary's half-sister, was the remaining family member (the rest of the group were deceased). She was living in Italy and said to be in posession of Shelley's/Byron's letters. A man hoping to buy them moved in to the pension where she was living, but she would only let him have them if he married her! Apparently that was too steep a price to pay so he gave up. Henry James must have been living in italy at the time and was made aware of this. He wrote The Aspern Papers based on this event! There you go--a bit of trivia for you today! I had no idea--now I need to read The Aspern Papers! I hope to read more about Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley and their circle eventually. I am ready for a little change of pace right now, though. I am nearly finished with And Only to Be Deceived (should finish it tonight) and plan on working once again on poor Robinson Crusoe (yes, I will finish reading you yet!) and Mystery of the Sea. However, I am looking forward to finally getting into The Mists of Avalon--I have only read the first chapter, but I am ready to really get into the story. For some reason the Dark Ages sound about right for a long holiday weekend!